This is a necessary book that finally reveals clearly the indissoluble link between the capitalist economic system and the ills of the food system. An illuminating read for anyone who wants to fully understand the forces in the field, and the dynamics in action. A book for change, a book for the future.

—Carlo Petrini, founder, Slow Food International

It is high time that everyone concerned about food takes a cold, hard look at the ugly underside of our food system. That means addressing unequal relations of wealth and power, looking capitalism in the eye, and taking it on. This is the book to help us do that.

Through the food lens, Eric Holt-Giménez offers an arresting account of the historic workings of capitalism, with its massive social deprivations and environmental costs. Rehearsing food system struggle experiences and bad-faith corporate market solutions, he champions a countermovement of intersectional alliances to reclaim public rights in creating a new politics of food justice.

Food is life. Growing food is the livelihood of most of humanity. And we all eat. Eric Holt-Giménez, in A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism, shows how food has been transformed into commodity, destroying farmers livelihoods, destroying the health of the planet and the health of people. He calls on each of us to become the change we want to see in the food system, so it nourishes the Earth and all beings.

—Vandana Shiva, environmental and food activist; author, Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology

Lively, timely, and engrossing, this the only book you need to understand everything that’s wrong with our industrial, capitalist food systems. A capsule history, a novice’s guide or refresher course on Marx, deep theoretical and practical understanding of food and farming, all in straightforward, understandable language; Eric Holt-Giménez is a national and international treasure. He should be read even—or especially—by people who aren’t foodies.

—Susan George, author, How the Other Half Dies: the Real Reasons for World Hunger; President of the Transnational Institute